


Ripples and Spills in the Dark

by yet_intrepid



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 21:21:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius isn't big on most traditions, but summer night adventures with his brother when they visit their cousins' house in the country? Now there's a tradition he'll insist on, cling to, because everything might be about to change.</p>
<p>1971, before Sirius’ sorting. Inspired by Radical Face’s song “Summer Skeletons”.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ripples and Spills in the Dark

 

_When all we knew wasn’t stolen_   
_There was nothing real to lose_   
_When our heads were still simple_   
_We’d sleep beneath the moon_   
_You were something that would always be around_   
_When regrets were nowhere to be found._

“Regulus. Psst, Reg.”

Regulus felt a warm night breeze sweeping over him and he turned over in bed, opening his eyes. The window was open and Sirius was outside it, perched on a broom which belonged to one of their cousins.

“Come on.”

Regulus slid out of the too-tall bed (all the beds at Uncle Cygnus and Aunt Druella’s country house were too tall for children) and grabbed his robes, pulling them on as he hurried over to Sirius.

“Not again,” he whispered to his brother. “Remember last time?”

Sirius just shrugged. “You won’t get in trouble,” he said. “If we’re caught, she’ll blame me for  _leading you astray_. And I’m going whether you come or not, so it’s up to you.”

Regulus sighed. “Sirius—”

“Reg! I’m going away to school in a month, you know. And we always sneak out when we come to stay at Bella and Cissy and Dromeda’s house. I want to go to that little lake again.”

Regulus hesitated a moment. But the moon was glittering in Sirius’ eyes, and his brother was going away soon, after all. Who knew how things would be after that?

“Let me get my shoes.”

“No, never mind that; I left mine. Just come on.” Sirius steered the broom a little closer. It wobbled invitingly.

Regulus climbed out the window and latched his arms around his brother’s waist.

“The grownups and Bella are still out on the front lawn,” Sirius said as he leaned into the broom to make it accelerate away from Regulus’ window. “So I figured we’d go through the woods and back to the lake.”

“That sounds good.”

The boys had been sent to bed early, so it was still dusky as they flew over the grounds towards the woods. Sirius kept the broom just high enough to put a bit of a tremor in Regulus’ arms as he squeezed his brother close. The moon was rising, bright, waning from full.

Just at the edge of the Malfoys’ copse of trees, Sirius went into a sharp descent and pulled a sharp stop. Breathless, Regulus climbed down, and Sirius picked up the broom. They went in among the trees.

Regulus had not realized how soft his feet had become since last summer. Mother did not like her children going barefoot, but Sirius took every chance to and Regulus usually imitated him. Still, there was only a very small garden at Grimmauld Place, and walking barefoot indoors left the feet uncallused. They picked their way carefully among pine needles and sticks and pebbles, neither admitting to the other that it would be more comfortable to walk shod. When Regulus tripped on a root and fell, skinning his knees through his thin summer robes and pajamas, Sirius helped him up, but didn’t ask if he was all right. Regulus didn’t complain. Sirius would only tell him it was part of the adventure.

By the time they made it to the lake, which was surrounded by trees and tall grass, the stars were out. Sirius dropped the broom by the water’s edge and stood in the shallows, ripples hitting the ankles of his pajamas. Regulus paused to roll up his pajamas before following.

“Let me see your knees,” said Sirius.

Regulus took off his robe and tossed it back to the shore so Sirius could look. Both knees were scraped and still bleeding, so Sirius splashed a little water on them. Regulus screwed up his face at the sting.

 And then Sirius paced a little through the water, getting his pajamas wetter yet, while Regulus stood still and looked out over the water.

“I don’t know if I’ll make any friends at Hogwarts,” Sirius finally blurted. Regulus stared up at him in shock and was about to protest, but Sirius went on: “Everyone I’ve ever been friends with has been somebody Mother and Father told us we should be friends with, and their parents probably told them the same thing. But there are all sorts of people at Hogwarts. People our parents wouldn’t say so much as ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ to. It’s so—so big, Reg. I could do anything there. But I’ve got to make friends. And what if they don’t like me…what if all the kids we’ve ever known only pretended to like us because of our parents? I want them to like me for something other than being a Black.”

Regulus, worried, looked up at his brother. “Mother says that the right sort of people—”

Sirius shook his head violently, and his gray eyes glinted silver in the moonlight again. “I want to meet  _all_  kinds of people, Reg. How do we know if they’re right about what’s right unless we try something different? Sometimes they say really stupid things; I mean, Mother won’t even let us walk around the house without shoes on, but it’s really nice when your feet are sore from walking through the woods and then you put them in the water, and we’d never know that if we didn’t try going barefoot, would we?”

He scooped up a handful of pebbles from the bottom of the lake and tossed them off fiercely, making circular ripples spread across the surface of the water. “Sometimes I really think that I’m ready to go away and find out what it’s like to be somewhere else and all that. Sometimes I wish I’d gotten to go years ago.”

Regulus found a smooth stone near his toes and picked it up, skipping it over the ripples Sirius had made with a careful flick of his wrist. He had not yet thought about what it would be like to go to Hogwarts. All his thoughts had been wrapped up in what it would be like to be at home without Sirius.

“I think you’ll like school a lot,” he said cautiously.

Sirius looked for a minute like he wasn’t sure of this, but then he took a couple steps further into the water and straightened up. “I will,” he said. “And you will too, next year. And we’ll eat together and have all the dessert we want, and win all the Quidditch matches, and sneak out at night—”

“Not too often,” put in Regulus hastily.

“—okay, but sometimes, and stay up late doing homework because we put it off to have adventures, but still make top grades! Believe me, Reg, it’ll be fabulous.”

“Next year,” Regulus said, and he could not keep a quiver from his voice.

“Well, yeah,” said Sirius, “but I’ll see you at Christmas and I’ll tell you everything and besides, I’ve got to learn it all first so I can help you along, don’t I? Which teachers are strict and which are fun, and which people are bullies and idiots, and then at Christmas I can lend you my wand and help you try some spells!”

Regulus lit up. “Promise?” he asked.

“Swear on Merlin’s wand,” Sirius replied solemnly. “That’s just this side of an Unbreakable Vow, you know.”

Regulus’ eyes widened appreciatively.

“Look at the stars,” Sirius said after a moment, flinging himself out deeper. “There’s mine, there—and there’s yours. They move around, don’t they? But they’re never too far away from each other.”

Regulus took two tentative steps after him. The lake water lapped at the edges of his skinned knees.

“You—you will come back, won’t you?” he said.

Sirius stretched back a hand and pulled him out, and suddenly they were up to their waists and Sirius was laughing.

“Somebody has to teach you how to have fun,” he said, and threw a double handful of water in Regulus’ face.

And Regulus did not know why, but he was laughing too, and splashing right back at Sirius, and soon they were soaked and climbing out of the water to lie on the grass and gaze up at the stars and dry out in the air of the summer night.

And Sirius talked, talked about the textbooks that were listed in his letter and whether Mother would get him his own owl, talked about the day he had tried to use their father’s wand (he had blown up a table, but escaped, and their parents never found out what happened) and what it must be like to hold one of your own. He talked about Quidditch and about how he’d finally get to meet girls that weren’t his cousins and about how someday, he’d kiss one.

The words faded into one another, faded into the night, as Regulus curled up against Sirius’ shoulder and let the rhythm of speech lull him like rippling water.

When Regulus’ eyes finally flitted open again, the moon was falling and he was shivering hard. He shook Sirius.

“We have to go back,” he said. “We have to be in our rooms before they knock to wake us up for breakfast. What if they’ve been looking for us all this time?”

Sirius pouted, but got up blearily. He was still half-asleep, and got them lost in the woods on the way back. When they finally flew up to the house on the borrowed broom, their parents were waiting on the steps.

Sirius landed the broom with a bump. The moon had set by now, leaving only gray pre-dawn, but its light remained in the glint of his eyes.

As long as Sirius was around, Regulus thought, he could be safe anywhere, in any blackness, any dark.

_Dirt in our ears, sun in our eyes_   
_Shirts hung in rags, head in the clouds_   
_Our fears had no teeth, hearts were still blind_   
_You barely talked and I didn’t mind._


End file.
